Risk and Protective Factors
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Notice: The Office of Suicide Prevention website is informational and not intended as a crisis response or hotline.
Suicide Prevention Base
The base for suicide prevention comes from observing suicide risk factors, suicide protective factors, and their interactions. Protective and risk factors include attitudes and behaviors. These factors have a wide variety of characteristics which may include: a person's family history, biology, psychology, and socio-cultural situation; or environmental conditions, such as easy access to the highly lethal means of suicide or easy access to help and treatment services.
Suicide Protective Factors
Protective Factors reduce the potential for a person's suicide or suicidal behavior. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center Risk and Protective Factors lists the following protective factors: Effective behavioral health care; Connectedness to individuals, family, community, and social institutions; Life skills (including problem solving skills and coping skills, ability to adapt to change); Self-esteem and sense of purpose or meaning in life; and Cultural, religious, or personal beliefs that discourage suicide
Suicide Risk Factors
Risk Factors increase the potential for a person's suicide or suicidal behavior. A person's age, gender, or ethnicity can increase the impact of certain risk factors or combinations of risk factors. Understanding risk factors can help counteract the myth that suicide is a random act or results from stress alone.
Biological, Psychological and Social Risk Factors for Suicide
- Previous suicide attempt
- Mental disorders - particularly mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and certain personality disorder diagnoses
- Alcohol and substance abuse disorders
- Family history of suicide
- History of trauma or abuse
- Hopelessness
- Impulsive and/or aggressive tendencies
- Some major physical illnesses
Environmental Risk Factors
- Job or financial loss
- Relational or social loss
- Easy access to lethal means
- Local clusters of suicide that have a contagious influence
- Stigma associated with help-seeking behavior
- Barriers to accessing health care, especially mental health and substance abuse treatment
- Certain cultural and religious beliefs - for instance, the belief that suicide is a noble resolution of a personal dilemma
- Exposure to the influence of others who have died by suicide, including media exposure
Socio-Cultural Risk Factors
- Stigma associated with help-seeking behavior
- Barriers to accessing health care, especially mental health and substance abuse treatment
- Certain cultural and religious beliefs - for instance, the belief that suicide is a noble resolution of a personal dilemma
- Exposure to the influence of others who have died by suicide, including media exposure
Selecting Useful Interventions for Suicide Prevention
Information about risk and protective factors contributes to selecting useful interventions for suicide prevention. But much remains to be learned; especially about how these risk and protective factors interact across the life course and how community suicide prevention programs can best integrate this information.